Revenue Operations to Drive a CLG Approach to B2B SaaS Processes and Strategies

Whether you’re a seasoned executive for a large multinational corporation, or a fledging entrepreneur launching your first B2B product, sales and revenues always end up playing a critical part. Yet there is a demand for more alignment between key departments to generate more sales.

This is what has become known as Revenue Operations or RevOps.

As SaaS companies continue to move towards complete digital transformation, it’s becoming more and more vital that revenue operations are heavily involved in this process. Every organization seems to take its own path toward digital transformation, but those focusing on a customer-led growth (CLG) approach seem to get the most return.

Revenue operations work alongside GTM teams to focus on a CLG approach that can be measured with real data. RevOps connect the dots and plan, design, execute and measure a customer-based approach to digital transformation and lead-growth for their organization.

Digital transformation is a great way to optimize your CLG approach to show the value and impact that your organization offers. Many companies have already gone 100% digital when it comes to customer experience and processes. The question is, how are these transformations being led, and how is success being measured?

A reminder of how revenue operations work

Revenue Operations may typically be more hands-off when it comes to customer interaction, but to drive revenue, RevOps is vital as they consider the impact on the customer first and foremost.

The demand for revenue operations comes with a mindset of building out a seamless process and alignment with not just sales but also inclusive of marketing and customer success. It’s about having a holistic approach to the customer, typically through digital transformation and using tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) software to collect and centralize all data points into one single source of truth.

Many organizations focus heavily on go-to-market strategy and how it meshes with customer experience. Revenue operations teams see the benefits of considering the customer journey to improve business outcomes more than any other strategy. If revenue operations can take a step back and consider customer statistics, approach and journey as a way to drive revenue, they will have a straighter path to revenue growth.

What a customer-led-growth approach should look like

With alignment between departments out of the way, it’s time to review how the new focus in sales alignment comes with a different approach to the customer journey.

This is known as CLG.

The overarching theme here is that the customer themselves fully leads the SaaS B2B customer process. CLG is about the various journeys and customizations a customer can take with a SaaS implementation. These options help put the customer experience at the forefront and help to put them in charge of the whole GTM (marketing-sales-cx) process as they see fit.

It’s about giving them the flexibility combined with the options of the tech to make their own decisions on how they would end up using the software, yet having help when it’s needed.

A look at traditional approaches

In the past, two options were on either side of the sales spectrum. One would be from a subject matter expert salesperson that connects the dots for the customer and shows them how they could not live without the product. Then there’s the complete self-service option, where customers have the ability to trial software and build out their own go-to-market strategy and processes without the help of any type of sales or service-oriented people to help guide them. This kills that personalized and customized touch that comes from highly qualified salespeople.

As we take this barometer and head towards the middle, we’ll find the evolution of the customer-led growth strategy. First, it gives enough leeway for the customer to realize how this tool helps with operational efficiency. Then, when needed, someone on the other side of the B2B SaaS platform will guide them further, whether it is someone from the sales, marketing, technical, or customer support area.

It helps bring the right type of people directly in front of the customer journey when needed as that ‘ask an expert’s option.

How do revenue operations help to close out the deal?

With a revenue operations team behind the scenes monitoring this customer experience and having the right type of business insights, data, and analytics ready for the customer during their journey, it helps to close out the sales portion and get the customer fully onboarded.

That’s how revenue operations make an impact. It’s a team effort of various skill sets that are used as a multi-pronged approach to get the sale closed at the right level for the product. The right level of the product means whether the customer needs a simplified version or the enterprise edition to do a complete digital transformation for his organization.

Revenue operations help to support the decision-making process. This becomes possible as revenue operations also help to drive management to support their decision with a data-driven focus. Features and benefits may be nice, but with so many various departments aligned, they each help to provide their own mindset to this process and thus eventually help finalize connecting the dots for the client.

Bottom Line

As you continue to hear about the power of RevOps, it’s key to note that it’s not just simply combining different teams together to get the right effect and support for the customer-led growth strategy.

It requires the proper consultancy to help break down the silos that these departments have worked in for so long and to use the power of that single source of truth to ensure that the customer is always fully empowered to make the right decision with the right information, every step of the way.

Ultimately, it’s about helping show that your SaaS is a one-stop shop for many organizations.